


An Obscure Occupation

by Triscribe



Series: Alternate Living Arrangements [12]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Found Family, I reject your reality and substitute my own
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22964278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triscribe/pseuds/Triscribe
Summary: “I told you my family goes around the world, finding magical creatures in need of a safe haven, right?” Harry nodded. “Well, sometimes, when I find a little boy or girl who’s at risk of becoming an Obscurial, I take them off to that safe haven too.”
Series: Alternate Living Arrangements [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1040795
Comments: 31
Kudos: 582





	An Obscure Occupation

**Author's Note:**

> This thing has been sitting in my files since, like, a week after the first Fantastic Beasts came out (note that I haven't seen the second and bear no intention of doing so either). I've finally accepted that there probably won't be any more motivation to add to this, and decided to polish the edges and post it as a one-shot. Hope you enjoy!  
> -Tri

The strange lady was sitting on the park bench again, not watching him.

Harry had seen her there six times over the last two weeks, gently tossing seeds underhand to the birds and squirrels. She was old, with white wispy hair and wrinkled skin, and always wore an army overcoat and sturdy, thick-soled boots. Most other people in the park ignored her, but the few times someone tried to talk to the lady, her left hand crept over to grasp at the handle of the old suitcase sitting by her side. And whenever she looked in Harry’s direction, she’d very carefully study the space around him, blue-tinted glasses making her eyes appear very odd.

Aunt Petunia had sniffed when Harry first told her this, and insisted he stay away from the strange woman. Two weeks later, though, she was off buying Dudley new clothes and school supplies while Harry had to wait for them at the park, and the lady waved for him to come over.

Step by tentative step, he slowly approached, until stopping just shy of the bench.

“Hello there, kiddo,” the woman greeted him, grinning. “Don’t have that fatso bully bothering you today, I see.”

He nodded.

“Your name’s Harry, right? Live with the Dursleys in that horribly bland house on Privet?”

Another nod, along with a tiny smile.

“Am I going to have to tickle you to get any sound?”

Harry giggled, shaking his head.

“Ah-ha, he _can_ make some noise! That’s good to know, I thought for a while you might be an animated statue. My name is Modesty, Modesty Scamander, but most everyone calls me Dusty.”

“Why?” The instant after he asked, Harry’s eyes widened, and he tried to backtrack. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude-”

“No no, it’s alright, I love explaining why! Come here and have a seat, I’ll tell you the whole story.” She smiled encouragingly, and waited until Harry settled himself on the other end of the bench before starting. “Well now, way back when I was just about your age, my older brother and sister and I were adopted by our Dad, who has a job that takes him all over the world. One of our first trips was to the American Southwest, a big desert landscape, to check up on an animal Dad had recently released back into the wild. Do you like animals, Harry?”

“Some of them,” he said quietly. “But not mean ones.”

“Fair enough. Would you mind holding this one for me while I talk? I promise, he’s very nice.” At Harry’s confused nod, Modesty reached up to her little white hat, and pulled down what he’d thought was a leaf-covered stick attached to the band. When she put it in his hand, though, Harry was shocked to realize it was a little leaf-covered person.

“This is Pritchard. He’s a type of creature that’s called a bowtruckle,” Modesty told him. “Pritchard, meet Harry. He’s going to hold onto you for a little while, if that’s alright?”

The green and brown bowtruckle chirped, before making himself comfortable on Harry’s palm.

“Wow,” the boy breathed.

“Thank you, Harry. Now, back to the desert. One of the spots my family visited was this great mess of sand dunes at the base of a big old mountain range, and while we were there, I insisted on stuffing all my pockets with as many interesting rocks as possible. For months afterward, no matter how many times they were cleaned out or washed, every time I put something else in those pockets it would come out covered in just as much sand and dust as those rocks had originally been! Sixty years later, my family _still_ teases me about it.”

Harry snickered, and in his hands Pritchard let out a couple of squeaks. Modesty frowned down at the little creature.

“How would you know if I deserved it, kindling, you weren’t around yet.” She huffed when he chirped some more. “Pickett’s retellings of my stories are not to be trusted.”

“How do you know what he’s saying?”

“Practice, really. If you listen to a bowtruckle long enough, it becomes second nature to understand what sentiments they’re expressing. Doesn’t do any good if you try to communicate with one from a different home tree, though, as they all seem to talk a bit differently from one to another. ”

“Huh.”

“‘Huh’, indeed. Now, most other creatures, if you can understand one you can understand them all. Take thunderbirds, for example...”

For the entire rest of the morning, Modesty told Harry all sorts of stories, about places she’d been and animals she’d seen, even the silly things the rest of her family got into. Harry gathered that she had adoptive parents, two older siblings, two younger, four cousins, assorted in-laws and ten nieces and nephews in total. Modesty herself never got married or had any children, but rather, ‘jumped from one girlfriend to the next’ as she got older.

“Granted, I find myself slowing down as I go along,” she confided in a pretend-whisper. “In the old days, I’d have as many as five over the course of one year. Now, I’ll stay with someone for as long as half a decade before we decide to part ways.”

Harry had a great time listening to her, but eventually, Modesty said she’d better go before Petunia came to get him.

“Will you be back here again?”

“Of course I will, dear. Very persistent, we Americans, and once we take a liking to someone, it’s very hard to get us to go away.” She winked at him, put Pritchard back on her hat, picked up her case, and left.

That night, asleep in his cupboard, Harry dreamed of bowtruckles and thunderbirds, hippogriffs and nifflers, strange old women with kind smiles and large, loving families.

Elsewhere, a daughter and her father sat together inside a suitcase, and began to plot.

-OO-

“Hello again, kiddo!”

“Hi,” Harry said quietly, glancing up from under his fringe at Modesty.

“That’s a nasty shiner you’ve got there,” the woman noted, peering at the bruise on his face. It had mostly faded into sickly green and yellow splotches, rather than the striking purple of the day before. “Want something that’ll make it feel better?”

“Um, that’s okay,” Harry told her. “It’ll be gone by tonight.”

“Yeah? You must be a fast healer. My big brother’s the same way. I mentioned him to you before, didn’t I?”

“Credence?”

“Yep, that’s him.” Modesty remained quiet for a long moment, before she patted the bench beside her. “C’mon up here, Harry, and I’ll tell you how we wound up in my Dad’s care.”

Unlike her previous stories, Modesty kept her tone subdued as she spoke about a woman named Mary Lou Barebone, who despised magic and witches, and sought to beat the strangeness out of the children she took in as her own.

“Credence couldn’t help it,” Modesty said. “His power took a life of its own, turning black and hungry, eager to lash out whenever he gave it the least amount of room. He became something called an Obscurial, because of that - an extraordinarily powerful being, but dangerous, very dangerous.”

Harry couldn’t help but shiver, just slightly.

Modesty noticed, and offered him a reassuring smile. “He’s better now, kiddo. An old geezer like me, and his power still gets hungry from time to time, but usually it just sleeps.”

“Is all magic like that?” He hadn’t meant to let the question slip out, and Harry winced, but his odd companion just laughed.

“No, sweetheart. Most magic is quite wonderful - and even Credence’s would have turned out very differently, if Mary Lou hadn’t hurt him so badly.” Harry’s breath caught in his throat, which Modesty noticed, her gaze turning sharp. “I think you know now why I’ve been so keen to talk to you, kiddo.”

He did, but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it just yet. “Am- am I a...?”

“An Obscurial? No, you aren’t. These,” Modesty tapped her blue-tinted glasses, “Are specially made to pick up on traces of an Obscurus - that’s what we call the thing an Obscurial’s magic has turned into. You don’t have any, yet.”

Harry trembled at that last word.

“And you don’t have to get any, either,” the woman added, leaning forward a bit so he could meet her gaze over the glasses. “I told you my family goes around the world, finding magical creatures in need of a safe haven, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, sometimes, when I find a little boy or girl who’s at risk of becoming an Obscurial, I take them off to that safe haven too.” A hand gently grasped Harry’s shoulder, and he didn’t flinch away, held still by the hope building in his chest. “Do you want to come home with me, Harry?”

"Please," the boy whispered.

“Do you have anything at that house you want to retrieve first?”

He shook his head.

“Alright then.” Modesty beamed, before putting her suitcase on the ground and opening it up. Somehow, a set of wood steps descended _into_ the case, as if she’d lifted a trapdoor into some underground basement. “You don’t have to stay in here the whole time we’re travelling, but this way, we don’t risk your relatives seeing and stopping us.”

Harry nodded, and very carefully climbed inside. Once at the bottom of the steps, he found himself in what seemed to be a sort of one-room apartment. There was a wall with cabinets and cooking supplies, another with bookcases full of stuffed shelves, a table and chairs right in the center, and a comfortable looking bed pushed into the corner.

“Just make yourself at home, sweetheart,” Modesty called down from the opening above him. “I’ll let you know when we reach the train station.”

“Okay.”

“And Harry?” He looked back up to meet her gaze. “I promise, everything’s going to be alright.”

His eyes seemed suddenly wet, and Harry blinked them several times as he nodded once more. Modesty smiled again, and carefully shut the suitcase lid.


End file.
